Laser Apparatus

LASER ACUPUNCTURE

The use of Laser technology makes efficient acupuncture application possible without the use of stainless steel needles. With the use of the laser, acupuncture becomes a painless process and readily acceptable to young and old alike. Irradiation by laser energy of acupuncture points can produce effects of diminishing inflammation, relieving pain, enhancing metabolism, improving tissue regeneration and immunity. It is very successful for many symptoms for which the traditional acupuncture or moxibustion are applicable such as neuralgia, rheumatic arthritis, bronchial asthma, pharyngitis, arthritis, urticaroa etc. Another important development of laser application is in cosmetology. This painless, germless and gentle operation of lasers is welcomed by practitioners as well as patrons. There are two main types of laser used in acupuncture, namely the Helium-neon laser and the solid state laser diodes. The depth to which the laser radiation can penetrate beneath human skin depends on the wavelength of the radiation. . What is LASER? Laser (which stands for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) is a beam of light and power released in the form of photons, resulting from a stimulated electronic shift from the high level to the low. It has now become one important tool for acupuncture and cosmetic applications. Medical Application • High power laser or hot laser: The output of laser is between 50 and 100W. It is usually used to solidify the bleeding and to cut the tissues, called "laser knife". • Low power laser: The output is lower than 100Mw. The power, because not strong enough to damage the hydrogen bonds in the tissues, causes no changes except the photochemistry effect. We call it the "cold laser" or "soft laser". The bio-effect of the low power laser Laser brings about a heat effect, a photochemical effect, an electromagnetic effect, and so on. But the low power laser only causes the photochemical effect. General speaking, high-output stimulation would hurt the tissues. On the contrary, low-power stimulation revives the tissues. The low power laser works well in adjusting bio-energetic and in encouraging mechanical functions. It is effective in relieving inflammation and pain, in anti-infection, in promoting tissue repair, in accelerating blood circulation, in improving the metabolism and immunity, etc. Promote wound discovery: • Promote the synthesis of collagen tissues • Proliferation of the capillaries • Accelerate blood circulation • Excite cell division • Improve immunity • Revive the white corpuscles • Increase the synthetic energy of nucleic acid Pain relief: • Promote blood circulation, dispel inflammatory causes of pain • Secrete natural endorphins • Gate-control theory • Stimulate the end nerves directly to block pain transmission • Wedensky effect • Meridians effect Meridian point effect: Treating the Meridian points with a low power laser can revive the related organizations without invasive fear and hurting the skin tissue. Beauty care: Low power laser can stimulate the skin to improve its tone. It is useful to reduce wrinkles and scars, to prevent aging, to regain elasticity, and so on. As for moles and freckles, the low power laser encourages the dissolution and absorption of melanin.

What is Autism?

Autism is known as a complex developmental disability. Experts believe that Autism presents itself during the first three years of a person's life. The condition is the result of a neurological disorder that has an effect on normal brain function, affecting development of the person's communication and social interaction skills.
People with autism have issues with non-verbal communication, a wide range of social interactions, and activities that include an element of play and/or banter.
ASD stands for Autism Spectrum Disorder and can sometimes be referred to as Autistic Spectrum Disorder. In this text Autism and ASD mean the same. ASDs are any developmental disabilities that have been caused by a brain abnormality. A person with an ASD typically has difficulty with social and communication skills.
A person with ASD will typically also prefer to stick to a set of behaviors and will resist any major (and many minor) changes to daily activities. Several relatives and friends of people with ASDs have commented that if the person knows a change is coming in advance, and has time to prepare for it; the resistance to the change is either gone completely or is much lower.
Autism, a wide-spectrum disorder
Autism (or ASD) is a wide-spectrum disorder. This means that no two people with autism will have exactly the same symptoms. As well as experiencing varying combinations of symptoms, some people will have mild symptoms while others will have severe ones. Below is a list of the most commonly found characteristics identified among people with an ASD.
Social skills
The way in which a person with an ASD interacts with another individual is quite different compared to how the rest of the population behaves. If the symptoms are not severe, the person with ASD may seem socially clumsy, sometimes offensive in his/her comments, or out of synch with everyone else. If the symptoms are more severe, the person may seem not to be interested in other people at all.

It is common for relatives, friends and people who interact with someone with an ASD to comment that the ASD sufferer makes very little eye contact. However, as health care professionals, teachers and others are improving their ability to detect signs of autism at an earlier age than before, eye contact among people with autism is improving. In many cases, if the symptoms are not severe, the person can be taught that eye contact is important for most people and he/she will remember to look people in the eye.
A person with autism may often miss the cues we give each other when we want to catch somebody's attention. The person with ASD might not know that somebody is trying to talk to them. They may also be very interested in talking to a particular person or group of people, but does not have the same skills as others to become fully involved. To put it more simply, they lack the necessary playing and talking skills.
Empathy - Understanding and being aware of the feelings of others
A person with autism will find it much harder to understand the feelings of other people. His/her ability to instinctively empathize with others is much weaker than other people's. However, if they are frequently reminded of this, the ability to take other people's feelings into account improves tremendously. In some cases - as a result of frequent practice - empathy does improve, and some of it becomes natural rather than intellectual. Even so, empathy never comes as naturally for a person with autism as it does to others.
Having a conversation with a person with autism may feel very much like a one-way trip. The person with ASD might give the impression that he is talking at people, rather than with or to them. He may love a theme, and talk about it a lot. However, there will be much less exchanging of ideas, thoughts, and feelings than there might be in a conversation with a person who does not have autism.
Almost everybody on this planet prefers to talk about himself/herself more than other people; it is human nature. The person with autism will usually do so even more.
Physical contact

A number of children with an ASD do not like cuddling or being touched like other children do. It is wrong to say that all children with autism are like that. Many will hug a relative - usually the mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, teacher, and or sibling(s) - and enjoy it greatly. Often it is a question of practice and anticipating that physical contact is going to happen. For example, if a child suddenly tickles another child's feet, he will most likely giggle and become excited and happy. If that child were to tickle the feet of a child with autism, without that child anticipating the contact, the result might be completely different.
Loud noises, some smells, and lights

A person with autism usually finds sudden loud noises unpleasant and quite shocking. The same can happen with some smells and sudden changes in the intensity of lighting and ambient temperature. Many believe it is not so much the actual noise, smell or light, but rather the surprise, and not being able to prepare for it - similar to the response to surprising physical contact. If the person with autism knows something is going to happen, he can cope with it much better. Even knowing that something 'might' happen, and being reminded of it, helps a lot.
Speech
The higher the severity of the autism, the more affected are a person's speaking skills. Many children with an ASD do not speak at all. People with autism will often repeat words or phrases they hear - an event called echolalia.
The speech of a person with ASD may sound much more formal and woody, compared to other people's speech. Teenagers with Asperger's Syndrome can sometimes sound like young professors. Their intonation may sound flat.
Repetitive behaviors
A person with autism likes predictability. Routine is his/her best friend. Going through the motions again and again is very much part of his/her life. To others, these repetitive behaviors may seem like bizarre rites. The repetitive behavior could be a simple hop-skip-jump from one end of the room to the other, repeated again and again for one, five, or ten minutes - or even longer. Another could be drawing the same picture again and again, page after page.

People without autism are much more adaptable to changes in procedure. A child without autism may be quite happy to first have a bath, then brush his teeth, and then put on his pajamas before going to bed - even though he usually brushes his teeth first. For a child with autism this change, bath first and then teeth, could completely put him/her out, and they may become very upset. Some people believe that helping a child with autism learn how to cope better with change is a good thing, however, forcing them to accept change like others do could adversely affect their quality of life.
Development happens differently
While a child without autism will develop in many areas at a relatively harmonious rate, this may not be the case for a child with autism. His/her cognitive skills may develop fast, while their social and language skills trail behind. On the other hand, his/her language skills may develop rapidly while their motor skills don't. They may not be able to catch a ball as well as the other children, but could have a much larger vocabulary. Nonetheless, the social skills of a person with autism will not develop at the same pace as other people's.
Learning may be unpredictable
How quickly a child with autism learns things can be unpredictable. They may learn something much faster than other children, such as how to read long words, only to forget them completely later on. They may learn how to do something the hard way before they learn how to do it the easy way.
Physical tics and stimming
It is not uncommon for people with autism to have tics. These are usually physical movements that can be jerky. Some tics can be quite complicated and can go on for a very long time. A number of people with autism are able to control when they happen, others are not. People with ASD who do have tics often say that they have to be expressed, otherwise the urge does not stop. For many, going through the tics is enjoyable, and they have a preferred spot where they do them - usually somewhere private and spacious. When parents first see these tics, especially the convoluted ones, they may experience shock and worry.
Obsessions
People with autism often have obsessions.
Myth
A person with autism feels love, happiness, sadness and pain just like everyone else. Just because some of them may not express their feelings in the same way others do, does not mean at all that they do not have feelings - THEY DO!! It is crucial that the Myth - Autistic people have no feelings - is destroyed. The myth is a result of ignorance, not some conspiracy. Therefore, it is important that you educate people who carry this myth in a helpful and informative way.
Not all people with autism have an incredible gift or savantism for numbers or music. People with autism are ordinary people... with autism.

Alcohol Consumption And Male Erectile Dysfunction: An Unfounded Reputation For Risk?

The report, one of four published articles from a population-based cross-sectional study principally on male erectile dysfunction (ED), is based on the responses of 1,580 participants to questions on their alcohol drinking behaviour. To assess the effects of alcohol on erectile function was not the primary objective of the study. The finding that alcohol consumption within the current guidelines for low-risk drinking was associated with lower odds of ED provides rationale for counseling alcohol drinkers with ED in day-to-day clinical practice. Men with ED need not harbour a sense of guilt about their past or current drinking if they consume alcohol within guidelines. This should not be interpreted as encouragement for non-drinkers to commence alcohol drinking. A decision by a non-drinker to commence drinking warrants careful consideration and informed decision, as it may be associated with multiple medical, socioeconomic and other implications, some of which could be serious.

Weight loss surgery revs sexual function in men

Morbidly obese men who lost two-thirds of excess weight regained prowes

Sexual dysfunction that commonly occurs in morbidly obese men improves after weight loss surgery, according to a new study.

"Sexual dysfunction should be considered one of the numerous potentially reversible complications of obesity," the study team concludes.

Dr. Ramsey M. Dallal, from Albert Einstein Healthcare Network, Philadelphia, and colleagues measured the degree to which 97 morbidly obese men suffered from sexual dysfunction and then analyzed the change in sexual function after substantial weight loss following gastric bypass surgery.

Before surgery, the morbidly obese men had significantly lower sexual function relative to that of a previously published reference control group of men before surgery, the investigators report.

After losing an average of two-thirds of their excess weight, men experienced significant improvements in sexual function, with the amount of weight loss predicting the degree of improvement.

"We estimate that a man who is morbidly obese has the same degree of sexual dysfunction as a nonobese man about 20 years older," the investigators report. "Sexual function improves substantially after gastric bypass surgery to a level that reaches or approaches age-based norms."

"Sexual function is an important aspect to quality of life and is now well documented to be a reversible condition," Dallal explained.

"We are interested in examining sexual function in females, as well as understanding the mechanism of obesity-related sexual dysfunction," Dallal added.

Taking B vitamins may prevent vision loss

Supplements reduced macular degeneration risk

Taking B vitamins can prevent a common type of vision loss in older women, according to the first rigorous study of its kind. It's a slight redemption for vitamin supplements, which have suffered recent blows from research finding them powerless at preventing disease.

Age-related macular degeneration is the leading cause of blindness in people 65 and older, with nearly 2 million Americans in the advanced stage of the condition. It causes a layer of the eye to deteriorate, blurring the center of the field of vision and making it difficult to recognize faces, read and drive. There's no cure, but treatment, including laser therapy in some cases, can slow it down.

"Other than avoiding cigarette smoking, this is the first suggestion from a randomized trial of a possible way to reduce early stage AMD," said William Christen of Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, who led the research. He said the findings should apply to men as well.

The women in the study who took a combination of B vitamins — B-6, folic acid and B-12 — reduced their risk of macular degeneration by more than one-third after seven years compared to women taking dummy pills.

The study, involving more than 5,000 women ages 40 and older at risk for cardiovascular disease, appears in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine.

Allen Taylor, director of the Laboratory for Nutrition and Vision Research at Tufts University in Boston, said the study was strong because patients were assigned at random and followed for a long time. But because the findings were teased out of a larger experiment for heart disease, there wasn't strict categorization of the type and severity of the eye disease, said Taylor, who does similar research but was not involved in the new study.

Among women taking the B vitamins there were 55 cases of AMD. In the placebo group, there were 82 cases. More serious cases, causing significant vision loss, totaled 26 in women taking B vitamins and 44 in those taking dummy pills.

There were too few cases of the most advanced AMD to make claims about vitamins' potential benefits, Christen said.

B vitamins lower homocysteine, a blood substance once thought to raise heart disease risk, but the nutrients weren't helpful for that in the larger study on cardiovascular disease.

The eye's small blood vessels may respond better to B vitamins' effect on homocysteine than the body's large vessels, Christen said.

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It's too soon to recommend B vitamins to people who want to prevent age-related vision loss, he said. But people who already have the disease should talk to their doctors about over-the-counter eye-protecting supplements, including vitamins C and E and zinc, which prior studies have shown slow the disease.

Christen and others recommended food sources of B vitamins and folic acid such as meat, poultry, fortified cereals, beans, nuts, leafy vegetables, spinach and peas.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health. Vitamins and placebos were provided by chemical maker BASF Corp., which did not participate in the study otherwise. Some of the researchers reported past funding from pharmaceutical and nutritional supplement makers.

Deadly lag: Why tracking outbreak took months

States’ voluntary reporting system may have delayed salmonella detection

	Highly magnified Salmonella Typhimurium bacteria, shown here, are the source of an ongoing outbreak of food poisoning linked to peanut products. Not all states are required to submit specimens for the precise DNA fingerprints that detect illnesses and lead to food recalls. View related photos

Detecting illnesses linked to the nation’s ongoing salmonella outbreak might have gone faster, health officials say, except for a hodgepodge of state laws and practices that delay precise identification of the potentially deadly bug.

Only about two-thirds of states require laboratories to submit salmonella specimens that contain the DNA fingerprints that confirm an outbreak. In the rest, it's merely voluntary, an msnbc.com survey showed.

Some states test every salmonella sample they collect using pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, or PFGE, while others check only some. In Wisconsin and Texas, for instance, only about half are screened.

The result? Outbreaks like the current one can go undetected, delaying warnings about illnesses and recalls of poisonous foods. People became ill from eating tainted peanut products as far back as Sept. 1, but it was November before the outbreak was detected and early January before it hit the public health radar.

“It’s that whole idea of finding needles in haystacks,” said Dr. Robert Tauxe, deputy director for foodborne illnesses at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We would like virtually all of the salmonella to be tested if we can.”

More information might have raised alarms earlier, Tauxe said, about the unusual Salmonella Typhimurium types linked to tainted peanut products that have sickened at least 655 people in 44 states and Canada, contributed to nine deaths and forced national recalls of more than 2,200 peanut products.

Mandatory testing urged

Food safety advocates have lobbied for years to require mandatory PFGE testing to detect the growing number of national outbreaks caused by foods ranging from spinach and peppers to peanut products.

“Having less than 100 percent compliance lowers the sensitivity of outbreak detection,” said John Besser, clinical lab manager for the Minnesota Department of Health. “The current system was designed to test local events such as the church potluck. The way you make the system better is by getting salmonella isolates tested.”

But states with voluntary programs say cooperative laboratory arrangements keep them on top of salmonella surveillance and that strained budgets and limited staffing force them to make hard choices. The same staffers who work on salmonella often are also monitoring HIV infections and tuberculosis, for instance.

Diet rich in calcium tied to lower cancer rate

Study of half a million men and women shows calcium may protect cells

A study in nearly half a million older men and women bolsters evidence that diets rich in calcium may help protect against some cancers.

The benefits were mostly associated with foods high in calcium, rather than calcium tablets.

Previous studies have produced conflicting results. The new research involved food questionnaires from participants and a follow-up check of records for cancer cases during the subsequent seven years. This research method is less rigorous than some previous but smaller studies.

But because of its huge size — 492,810 people and more than 50,000 cancers — the new study presents powerful evidence favoring the idea that calcium may somehow keep cells from becoming cancerous, said University of North Carolina nutrition expert John Anderson, who was not involved in the study.

The study was run jointly by the National Institutes of Health and AARP. The results appear in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine.

National Cancer Institute researcher Yikyung Park, the study's lead author, called the results strong but said more studies are needed to confirm the findings.

Duke University nutrition researcher Denise Snyder said the results support the idea that food rather than supplements is the best source for nutrients.

Participants were AARP members aged 50 to 71 who began the study in the mid-1990s. A total of 36,965 men and 16,605 women were later diagnosed with cancer. There were more than 10 different kinds of cancer, the most common being prostate, breast, lung and colorectal.

Compared with people who got little calcium, those who consumed the most had the lowest chances of getting colon cancer. Those in that highest category got on average 1,530 milligrams a day among men and 1,881 milligrams daily among women. The recommended amount for older people is 1,200 milligrams, and getting much more than that didn't result in any greater protection. Adults can get that amount from four cups of milk or calcium-fortified orange juice.

Men who got the most calcium from food were about 30 percent less likely to get cancer of the esophagus, about 20 percent less likely to get head and neck cancer and 16 percent less likely to get colon cancer, when compared to men who got low amounts of calcium.

Among women, those who got the most food-based calcium were 28 percent less likely to get colon cancer than low-calcium women.

Skin Pigment Disease Reversed with Piperine Nutrient From Black Pepper

Vitiligo is a disease in which sections of the skin lose their pigmentation and turn white, often leading to a blotchy, mottled look. Because melanin, the chemical that gives skin its pigmentation, also protects against the ultraviolet radiation causes skin cancer, people with vitiligo may be at increased risk for that disease.

The current study focused on piperine, the chemical that gives black pepper its spiciness. Researchers applied piperine and its synthetic derivatives to the skin of mice, and found that doing so caused the animals' skin to turn an even light brown after only six weeks.

When combined with ultraviolet radiation treatment, piperine caused the mice's skin to become darker faster. The effect was also more long-lasting

The researchers noted the advantages of piperine over the current methods used to treat vitiligo. While ultraviolet radiation alone does cause repigmentation of the skin, the color produced is patchy, and the use of frequent radiation treatments increases a patient's risk of skin cancer. Corticosteroid treatments, on the other hand, only work in 25 percent of patients.

Approximately one in 100 people in the United States suffer from vitiligo, which is believed to result from a combination of autoimmune, environmental and genetic factors. Among most well-known sufferers is pop musician Michael Jackson.